Autumn Statement Live Feed

The 8.5% Triple Lock commitment is a welcome boost for pensioners, providing one of the largest cash increases to the state pension, exceeding £900 for full-state pension recipients. This lifeline is crucial for those heavily relying on it for critical living costs. Simultaneously, the 9.8% minimum wage hike to £11.44 per hour benefits low earners. Extending this increase to individuals aged 21 and 22 acknowledges their higher living expenses, demonstrating a commitment to making work financially rewarding, aligning with the Chancellor's vision to "make work pay". The reduction in National Insurance is a real boost, giving an extra £37 net monthly income to those on £35,000, but news on IHT was unexpectedly quiet; a difficult move during a cost of living crisis. Perhaps wait for the Spring Budget for that.

The Budget provides some great incentives for businesses to invest, develop and grow, providing they have the cash in the bank to do so. Full expensing allowing businesses to claim full tax allowances on equipment purchases and a reduced rate of tax on a simplified R&D scheme will benefit businesses that already have cash in the bank and are already investing, growing and developing. Unfortunately, this will have little impact on smaller businesses who can’t afford to invest in or purchase new equipment, compounded by an increase in the National Living Wage, pushing up their wage bills at a time that many are still locked into high energy contracts that are crippling them. Late payments have a huge impact on SMEs' cashflow, impacting paying staff, tax and their overheads. Introducing payment time requirements only for firms bidding for large Government contracts is a missed opportunity to roll out a strategy to assist small businesses with late payments, which are pushing a record.

It is good news that the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme has been extended as this will give lenders the incentive to offer mortgages to people with small deposits. However, this is just a small sector of buyers so it will do little to boost a flagging housing market. Not launching a Stamp Duty holiday seems like a glaring error and missed trick. To be honest, the Chancellor can do all the fancy tax cuts he wants but none of this will be of any comfort to anyone who has recently taken out a mortgage at a 5%+ interest rate, which adds hundreds of pounds a month onto most people's payments.

When Rishi Sunak met with Elon Musk earlier this month, the tech billionaire told the PM "there should be a bias towards supporting small companies". In today's Autumn Statement, we've seen the complete opposite: a £9bn tax loophole for huge firms, a £3.45 token gesture for the self-employed, but nothing for small businesses - especially those whose greatest expenditure is staff. A shocker of an Autumn Statement for small business.

Abolishing class 2 National Insurance and cutting Class 4 by 1% to 8% is fantastic news for the self-employed, particularly as they've been hammered in recent years. However, growth forecasts for the next two years have been slashed, as our ever-increasing national debt weighs heavily on the economy. We need far more radical measures than this.

The cuts to National Insurance deliver a boost in net pay to millions, which lenders in turn are likely to reflect in affordability models, allowing many prospective borrowers to achieve a higher mortgage.

Class 2 National Insurance will be abolished "saving the average self-employed person £192 a year," according to Hunt. This is clearly a huge push for the self employed and is an immediate win for millions of self employed people and for small businesses. On Monday, Hunt also confirmed a new investment zone in West Yorkshire, and has today announced three further investment zones in the West Midlands, East Midlands, and Greater Manchester. These zones will help catalyze £3 billion in private investment and 65,000 new jobs. A further investment zone will be created in Wales in the region of Wrexham and Flintshire. This has been long awaited and is a fantastic outcome for small businesses up and down the country who will benefit from the investment.

The Chancellor hailed his tax relief package for business investment as the single biggest business tax cut in modern British history, maximising business investment, increasing productivity and boosting GDP. This is a measure the OBR predicts will create £3bn investment a year.

For businesses, this is very welcome news, but tax is not the only barrier for businesses looking to invest. There are many businesses that simply don’t have the working capital to invest in growth. The Chancellor suggests that this business tax cut will prevent the need for borrowing, which simply isn’t realistic for businesses, many of which are still battling high overheads.

If the Chancellor wants businesses to grow, increase productivity and contribute to GDP, he must recognise that borrowing to invest is a viable business strategy, albeit one that will certainly be boosted by this tax relief package.

This Autumn Statement, on the whole, was yet more tinkering around the edges and contained nothing substantive. This was truly emblematic of a government that is out of ideas and out of touch with what people want and need.

The National Insurance cuts across the board will help both employed and self-employed workers. The planning system's organisational tweaks should help the UK's build plans. Generally, I see very little being offered in the most important Autumn Statement prior to the looming General Election.

Great news for landlords and builders of all sizes: you can now convert existing houses into two separate flats without the hassle of extensive planning permissions. This offers a profitable way to use space more efficiently and adds to the market supply

Some very welcome news for the self-employed but a missed opportunity for smaller businesses. The announcements regarding NI will be welcome to many self-employed people across the country, but many small businesses will feel this was a missed opportunity to support them. The country of small shop keepers we might not be any more, but the country of small businesses we certainly are, and they are often the innovators and mass employers of the future. The focus seems to have been on the largets businesses and the self employed with the back bone of the UK economy being left in the financial shade.